Mt. Holly — Leave it to beavers to kick off this summer’s popular “Know Your Wild Neighbors” series at the Mount Holly Town Library, Wednesday, July 24, at 7 p.m. Chris Bernier of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department will be the featured speaker at the workshop, which is sponsored by the Ninevah Foundation and free of charge.

Bernier will explain how beavers accomplish their amazing engineering feats: gnawing down large trees to construct dams that create the ponds where they live, and building domelike lodges of branches and mud that are home to several generations and are reachable only through underwater entryways.

The presentation will also cover how the beaver’s work benefits other wildlife, and what to do about unwanted beaver activity, such as a beaver dam that causes flooding. Beaver pelts, a beaver skull and a sample of “beaver-gnawed” wood will be on display, as well as beaver “baffles” – structures designed to control water level and protect culverts affected by beaver dam-building.

Did you catch that? Someone from Vermont Fish and Wildlife will be talking about controlling beaver problems by wrapping trees and installing bafflers. Someone bring me the smelling salts because I may faint. Vermont in particular should know their way around beaver issues better than most. It’s the home of Skip Lisle, inventor of the beaver deceiver. I suppose they are using the term ‘baffler’ just to show their fierce independence. But this is almost encouraging. Almost.

I knew Chris’ name looked familiar. Hope he has learned more about beavers than the last time he was in the news.

Chris Bernier, a specialist with the state Fish and Wildlife Department said the animals are particularly active this time of year. “There’s a lot of busy parents running around collecting food for their young in the springtime,” Bernier said.

Beavers running around in the springtime? You mean like months before their children are born? I’m glad you know there are ways to control beaver problems besides trapping but I hope you leave that part out of your talk.

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However, parents are active protecting young in the summertime. As this Massachusetts couple found out the hard way.

Mass. couple’s dog runs afoul of beaver in Brookline

A couple hiking with their dog in the northwest corner of Brookline near the power lines Saturday, July 6, had an unexpected detour to the animal hospital for emergency surgery after their dog was bitten by a beaver. – See more at: “The owner said the beaver was initially circling, it would go under and come back up,” Monachelli said. “This went on for 30 to 40 minutes, antagonizing the beaver. The owners heard the dog cry out and (discovered) two big gashes on the left front paw, bleeding profusely.”

Ow. Here’s a general rule. Dog owners everywhere jot this down. We don’t let our pets swim with beavers in June and July because they are worried protecting their little kits and will attack an intruder that’s capable of doing harm. Got that?

“The dog was rushed in on a human stretcher,” Monachelli said. “I anesthetized her, sutured and bandaged (the wound) and gave her antibiotics and pain medication. The bite punctured muscles and blood vessels, and there was a lot of bruising, but it wasn’t very extensive.”

Once she was patched up, Gracy was able to go home and is expected to recover. Her owners were unavailable for comment. Beavers are found throughout the area, but are bites common? According to the state’s Fish and Game website, beavers are strictly vegetarian and mainly nocturnal, appearing most often at dawn and dusk to repair their dams and gather food. Mo

Todd Szewczyk, Brookline’s Fish and Game officer, said the beaver was likely just trying to defend itself. “Coyotes prey on beavers,” he said. “The dog was just trying to play, but the beaver thought it was a predator. The two don’t come in contact very often, but (beavers) do meet coyotes pretty frequently.”

I’m glad the dog got better care than the man from Bellarus. And I’m glad the Fish and Game officer saw it in a reasonable way. Let’s hope the owners tell all their friends why its not a good idea to let your dog swim in a beaver pond in the summer.

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I confess I am no engineer, but I truly can’t understand how this works. Maybe you can help me?

SC environmental officials say pond must be drained so beaver damage can be repaired

Property owner Ramona Wesley says the water isn’t draining properly because beavers have built dams on the pond. DHEC officials said the water needs to be low enough so crews can access the holes the beavers have made and fill them in.

Lower the pond, fill in the holes so you can drain more water? What aren’t I understanding? Are they talking about a manmade dam that they think beaver dug into? Are they talking about lodges around the lake they are mislabeling as dams? I only understand it enough to realize it makes zero sense. You might assume the reporters noticed that it was illogical too, but I now know that reporters don’t think at all when they’re reading the teleprompter. Yesterday I heard a reporter read this OUTLOUD on channel 2 with no dawning realization whatsoever.

Sigh.

Beavers are born to bite wood, not people

May 2013 by Simon Jones

The headline “beaver kills man” is not one you will see very often. It appeared recently after a wild beaver attacked and killed an angler in Belarus – an event that is both tragic and highly unusual.

Beavers are shy, nocturnal rodents, ungainly on land, that avoid immediate threats from natural predators or humans by quickly entering the water and swimming or diving to safety. If this means of escape is not open to a beaver and it is cornered, then, like many wild animals, it will attempt to frighten off its attacker or defend itself or its young with a sudden lunge and bite.

Beavers are herbivores that often feed on woody plants, so they have evolved powerful jaws and incisor teeth that can inflict deep puncture wounds should a person get too close to a stressed animal.

If accurate, the story from Belarus suggests that the beaver was cornered and fell back on its last line of defence, with fatal consequences for the man who approached it, reportedly to take a photo.

The world has become so entirely insane over the repeated Belarus story that this tepid defense from the leader of the woefully bureaucracy-laden Scottish beaver trial looks like something from a modern day Robert the Bruce – swinging into battle over the moors to defend his highland trial. No he never mentions that the story is a rerun and was exhaustively reported 6 weeks ago , and yes he inexplicably omits the part about the fisherman trying to pick UP the beaver for the photo. But any port in a storm, right?

Benefits of beavers

For the beaver, the last few decades have been a success story as ecologists increasingly recognise the benefits they can bring. Over-hunted for their high-value fur, both species of this tubby, spaniel-sized mammal were driven to the verge of extinction in many areas by the 19th century. However, the late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen a remarkable reversal in fortunes. Legal protection and numerous reintroduction schemes have allowed populations to rise dramatically in much, but not all, of their former ranges.

Beavers are a keystone species: the dams they build and the ponds they create help to improve biodiversity, because they provide the conditions for many other wetland species to flourish. Beaver dams can also trap sediment, pollutants and regulate water flow at times of flood or drought.

I’ve corresponded with Simon in the past about the illicit Tay beavers that refused to die and mucked things up for the proper beaver channels. His heart is in the right place but his head might be weighed down by suffocating meetings and research I think. I know one attendee sent him photos of our beaver festival a few years back but he apparently wasn’t tempted to try one of his own! I’m glad someone respectable wrote a hearty response to combat the increasingly terrifying headlines. (Yesterday I read ‘residents on edge as beaver population grows.’) But the well-meaning article goes on to make the apparently necessary effort to soothe folks by promising that if beavers create problems we can always kill them later. Which is an argument that never sits well with me.

In the longer term, culling and hunting to control populations are also important for ensuring that people and beavers can coexist. This can be a sensitive issue in countries where the animal is officially protected and there is public opposition to culling.

Yes, there is.

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Oh and in case you don’t recognize that beaming face behind all those medals, that’s Ian Timothy our beaver friend from Kentucky at his last EVER trip to Carnegie hall for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards National Ceremony. Day Shift won another gold, his entire portfolio of won a silver. He has been a winner every year for four years. He’ll be too old to enter again next year.